After the delightful wooden elevator down from Antwerp's streets, the 1876-foot pedestrian tunnel under the Scheldt is "staggeringly monotonous," reports Atlas Obscura, but I rather like it. I have one question: what would the diameter of a well-lit circular tunnel like this need to be for its curvature to be imperceptible?

Actually, I have another question: What would the diameter of a dimly-lit circular tunnel like this, lined with books, need to be for its curvature to be imperceptible?

Photo: Trougnouf (CC BY-SA 4.0) Read the rest

Garnet Hertz is the designer/scholar/provocateur behind the amazing Disobedient Electronics project ("Building electronic objects can be an effective form of social argument or political protest"); though he is normally based at British Colombia's Emily Carr University, he's currently touring Europe with the Disobedient Electronics book on a Disobedient Electronics protest tour, with stops in London, Southampton, the Hague, Brussels, Paris, Berlin and Madiera. Read the rest

Belgian artist Wim Delvoye attained fame and controversy by tattooing fine-art pieces on pigs; when retired tattoo parlor manager Tim Steiner volunteered his skin for a Delvoye piece, the result was purchased by a German art collector called Rik Reinking for €130,000 (Steiner got a third of that). Steiner has agreed to be flayed after his death, with his skin stretched, cured and framed for Reinking's collection. Read the rest

The Belgian Parliament has voted to continue its decades-long practice of supplying free booze to lawmakers, despite several incidents of unpleasant, drunken behavior, because the alternative is going back to having to drag elected officials out of the local bars when it's time to vote. Read the rest

After a pair of Belgian teenagers made a viral sensation with a Youtube video documenting their unauthorized sleepover in an Ikea store, at least 10 other sets of teens have tried to repeat the stunt: now, Ikea is putting the world's teens on notice that they will press charges if they catch you trying it. Read the rest

Last November, Kris Temmerman decided to outfit the empty store-window of his Antwerp flat/studio as a playable video game for his neighbours to play as they passed by. He wrote his own Arduino-powered pixel-art game and set some controllers into the exterior window-frame and watched what happened. It turned out great, and Kris has thoroughly documented the build and released his source so you can try it too. Read the rest

From "Habitat," a 2010 installation in the Luchtbal district of Antwerp, UNFOLD's "Felis Domesticus." It's a 3.5 meter soft sculpture of a sleeping cat that visitors can lounge upon (finally, the lap-sitting tables are turned!). Pity this never went into production as a piece of furniture; it'd make a fabulous beanbag alternative.

Habitat: Felis Domesticus

(via Geekologie) Read the rest

Remember early-nineties Belgian techno of the sort that (Mike Shallcross quipped, as quoted on the wikies) was "tough, metallic tracks...with harsh, discordant synth lines that sounded like distressed Hoovers?" If you're having a hard time trying to recreate the sound from that description, try this.

This is Belgium Part Two: Cherry Moon On Valium has discovered a cheap and effective way to breathe new life into those old 12 inches: just slow them down to 115bpm, and voila (gesluierd): the intervening decades telescope down to nothing in an eyeblink. Read the rest

A new Snowden leak, reported by Laura Poitras in Der Spiegel, shows that the UK spy agency GCHQ used fake versions of Slashdot and LinkedIn to attack tech staff at Global Roaming Exchanges -- interchange points where large networks meet up. It's speculated that the attacks were used to compromise Belgacom International Carrier Services (BICS).

GRX is roughly analogous to an IX (Internet Exchange), and it acts as a major exchange for mobile Internet traffic while users roam around the globe. There are only around two dozen such GRX providers globally. This new attack specifically targeted administrators and engineers of Comfone and Mach (which was acquired over the summer by Syniverse), two GRX providers.

Der Spiegel suggests that the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British sister agency to the NSA, used spoofed versions of LinkedIn and Slashdot pages to serve malware to targets. This type of attack was also used to target “nine salaried employees” of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the global oil cartel.

This new revelation may be related to an attack earlier this year against Belgacom International Carrier Services (BICS), a subsidiary of the Belgian telecom giant Belgacom. BICS is another one of the few GRX providers worldwide.

UK spies continue “quantum insert” attack via LinkedIn, Slashdot pages [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica]

(via TechDirt) Read the rest

Read the rest

Dairy farmers protesting in Brussels sprayed thousands of litres of milk on the European Parliament and its police cadre. Shown here, a small thumbnail of a remarkable photo by John Thys for AFP/Getty Images. Click through for the full image, on the Telegraph's site.

Dairy farmers spray milk at the European Parliament in Brussels Read the rest

Belgium's Maarten De Ceulaer displayed his knobbly chairs and sofas at Milan's Spazio Rossana Orlandi. The series is called "Mutation."

Each piece in the Mutation series is made from foam spheres, cut so they fit together, attached to a frame and coated in rubber or flocked. De Ceulaer’s work is also on show at the Triennale di Milano and as part of IN Residence at Ventura Lambrate.

Mutation by Maarten De Ceulaer

(via Crib Candy)

(Photo: Nico Neefs) Read the rest

La Balade des Gnômes is a B&B in Durbuy, Belgium. It has a series of themed rooms kitted out with carved driftwood and various fantastic elements. As the name implies, many of the rooms look like something out of a Brian Froud illustration, but there's also a Jules Verne space-exploration room, Baba Yaga's hut, a troll's den, a Gaudi themed room, and what appears to be a Trojan Horse. It's like a Belgian Madonna Inn, with less kitsch and more fantasy. The site's kind of hard to navigate, and the photos are disappointingly small, but there's a partial set of larger ones on Kozikaza.

La Balade des Gnômes - Chambres de charme - Chambres d'hôtes - Bed&Breakfast à DURBUY (Heyd) (via Neatorama)

(Photo: © Photos P. Schyns - Sofam) Read the rest

Robin Wauters writes in The Next Web about the bizarre, cartoon-villain move from Belgian copyright collecting society SABAM, who are demanding that public libraries pay royalties when volunteers read to groups of ten or so small children. SABAM is demanding €250 per year from each cash-strapped library. The technical term for this is "eating your seed corn" (a less technical term might be "acting like a titanic asshole"). If kids are read to, they grow up to be readers, and they buy books. If kids don't get the reading habit, they won't grow up to buy books and writers will starve.

Twice a month, the library in Dilbeek welcomes about 10 children to introduce them to the magical world of books. A representative of the library in question is quoted in the De Morgen report as saying there’s no budget to compensate people who read to the kids, relying instead on volunteers (bless them)...

The De Morgen reporter then contacted SABAM (probably to check if this wasn’t an elaborate hoax or some grave error in judgment) and received a formal statement from the organization asserting that, indeed, public libraries need to pay up for the right to – once again – READ BOOKS TO KIDS.

Belgian rightsholders group wants to charge libraries for READING BOOKS TO KIDS Read the rest

Tomorrow marks a day of global protest against ACTA, the profoundly undemocratic copyright treaty that was negotiated in secret, and which governments are signing up for without democratic review and debate from elected representatives. In Brussels, thousands will mass at the Bourse De Bruxelles at 2PM to give the EU an earful.

Update: Germany's out

To send a letter to your elected representatives, anywhere in the world, use the form below. You can get your own copy of this form from the good folks at KILL ACTA, here. These are the same folks who organized the SOPA blackout: let's make the global fight against ACTA twice as big!

select {width: 300px; font-size: 14px;} button { -moz-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #caefab; -webkit-box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #caefab; box-shadow:inset 0px 1px 0px 0px #caefab; background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #77d42a), color-stop(1, #5cb811) ); background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #77d42a 5%, #5cb811 100% ); filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#77d42a', endColorstr='#5cb811'); background-color:#77d42a; -moz-border-radius:6px; -webkit-border-radius:6px; border-radius:6px; border:1px solid #268a16; display:inline-block; color:#ffffff; font-family:arial; font-size:24px; font-weight:bold; padding:7px 5px 7px 5px; text-decoration:none; text-shadow:1px 1px 0px #333; display: block; clear: both; margin-bottom: 10px; width: 300px; cursor: pointer; } button:hover { background:-webkit-gradient( linear, left top, left bottom, color-stop(0.05, #5cb811), color-stop(1, #77d42a) ); background:-moz-linear-gradient( center top, #5cb811 5%, #77d42a 100% ); filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.gradient(startColorstr='#5cb811', endColorstr='#77d42a'); background-color:#5cb811; } button:active { position:relative; top:1px; } input { width: 290px; padding: 5px; border: 1px solid #000; font-size: 24px; border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; -moz-border-radius: 5px; height: 40px; box-shadow: #000 2px 2px; display: block; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; } textarea { display: block; background: white; border: 1px solid #666; padding: 5px; border: 1px solid #000; border-radius: 5px; -webkit-border-radius: 5px; -moz-border-radius: 5px; width: 290px; height: 100px; box-shadow: #000 2px 2px; display: block; margin: 0 10px 10px 0;' } select { -moz-border-radius: 5px 5px 5px 5px; background: none repeat scroll 0 0 white; border: 1px solid #000000; display: block; margin: 1px 20px 10px 0; padding: 15px 5px; }

Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country's officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Read the rest

An 83-year-old woman with a badly infected lower jaw had the entire thing replaced with a 3D printed titanium/bioceramic replica. The surgery was performed by doctors from the University of Hasselt (Belgium) in collaboration with Dutch surgeons.

The 3D printer prints titanium powder layer by layer, while a computer controlled laser ensures that the correct particles are fused together. Using 3D printing technology, less materials are needed and the production time is much shorter than traditional manufacturing. The mandible was finally given a bioceramic coating compatible with the patient's tissue by BioCeramics in Leiden. The artificial jaw weighs 107 grams, it is only 30 grams heavier than a natural jaw, but the patient can easily get used to it.

The operation was performed in June last year in the hospital in Sittard-Geleen. One day later the lady could start talking and swallowing.

83 year-old woman got 3D printed mandible

(Thanks, Don!) Read the rest

The FBI thinks that DB Cooper, the infamous parachuting plane hijacker, was a French Canadian who got the idea from a Belgian comic book:

On the cover of one issue of the Belgium-produced comic — sold in Europe and French Canada shortly before Cooper’s hijacking of a Portland-to-Seattle flight — the Canadian superhero is shown parachuting from an aircraft. And that’s what the man calling himself Cooper did four decades ago this week — during a rainstorm while flying somewhere above the dense forests of the Pacific Northwest — to escape justice after receiving his ransom payoff from U.S. authorities.

The informally deputized investigators, who were invited to analyze the Cooper mystery by Seattle-based FBI agent Larry Carr, are Tom Kaye, a paleontologist at Seattle’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Illinois-based metallurgical engineer Alan Stone and University of Chicago scientific illustrator Carol Abraczinskas.

FBI-backed team finds Canadian link to famous ’60s-era plane hijacking

(Thanks, Nadreck!)

  FBI has lead on D.B. Cooper - Boing Boing Plane hijacker D.B. Cooper's parachute found - Boing Boing Mystery inmate identified - Boing Boing Read the rest